But, at best, this was but the creaking mechanism of the
artificial structure of society, and it was varied only by an occasional
literary or artistic sally, or a preachment in the terms of a convinced
moralization upon the unvarying text that the wages of sin is death. Why
not a touch of humanism, now and again, thought Banneker, following the
inevitable parallels in paper after paper; a ray of light striking
through into the life-texture beneath?
By way of experiment he watched the tide of readers, flowing through the
newspaper room of the Public Library, to ascertain what they read. Not
one in thirty paid any attention to the editorial pages. Essaying
farther afield, he attended church on several occasions. His suspicions
were confirmed; from the pulpit he heard, addressed to scanty
congregations, the same carefully phrased, strictly correct comments,
now dealing, however, with the mechanism of another world. The chief
point of difference was that the newspaper editorials were, on the
whole, more felicitously worded and more compactly thought out.
Essentially, however, the two ran parallel.
Banneker wondered whether the editorial rostrum, too, was fated to
deliver its would-be authoritative message to an audience which
threatened to dwindle to the vanishing point.
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